Tuesday, 10 September 2013

Straight from the live text, Apple have announced the next generations in the iPhone range.

First up, the 5C. The 5C entirely replaces the iPhone 5. It features exactly the same internal components save for an improved battery. The main difference is the new hardened polycarbonate shell, which comes in a range of colours.

The 5C is taking over the traditional "Previous model" price point. In the past, when Apple has released a new phone, they have knocked the previous model down to an 8gb storage amount and cut the price by about $100. This changes things. For the first time, it's still available in 16 or 32gb and there has been a significant design change. As well as this, a range of silicone rubber cases has been designed to complement the iPhone 5C, in a range of rather bright, teen friendly colours. Here is the green phone combined with the blue case... yeah...

Other than the case though, the phone is identical to the iPhone 5.

The new flagship phone for Apple is the iPhone 5S. This is an evolution on the 5 adding a raft of new features to the device, not least, another new colour palette:

That's right, that's a champagne gold colour you can see in between the traditional slate and silver colours.

But away from the colour of the unit, there have been some serious revisions under the hood. The new A7 chip is 64 bit, contains 40x the processing power that the original iPhone had and is complemented by a second chip, the M7 co-processor which is dedicated to processing data from the motion sensors. This means that more of the phone's raw processing power can go towards apps and games, without having to worry about tracking the gyroscope and accelerometer in the phone.

The camera has also gotten a bump, featuring a 15% larger sensor and an f/2.2 size aperture to provide the best quality photos possible. The camera is capable of burst mode, 120fps slo-mo and features two LEDs for the flash, which the phone automatically adjusts to give you the perfect low light exposure.

The biggest new feature however, is TouchID. Yes, it's a fingerprint sensor. This excites me far too much.

Essentially, the home button now allows you to unlock your phone. The home button now contains a fingerprint sensor, protected by laser cut sapphire, which lets you simply touch your finger to the button and unlock the screen. This can also be used to authenticate iTunes/AppStore/iBooks purchases and save you constantly entering passwords. For the concerned among you, the fingerprints are encrypted and saved on the A7 chip, they are never shared with iCloud, nor are they allowed to be shared anywhere within the phone, which is a definite relief.

The iPhone 5S and 5C will both ship with iOS7 on the 20th of September. iOS 7 is available to download on the 18th of September. You can pre-order the 5C from Friday 13th of September, however there are no pre-orders available for the the 5S, you'll simply have to go and queue if you want one.

The UK prices are as follows (screen caps from the Apple UK store):

If you want the full, blow by blow details from the press conference, check out our live blog of the event here